Everything Is Design: The Work of Paul Rand featured more than 200 advertisements, posters, corporate brochures, and books by this master of American design. It was Rand who most creatively brought European avant-garde art movements such as Cubism and Constructivism to graphic design in the United States. His philosophy, as expressed in his work and writings, including the recently republished 1947 Thoughts on Design, argued that visual language should integrate form and function. Born in Brooklyn in humble circumstances, Rand (1914-1996) launched his career in the 1930s with magazine cover design and, starting in the early 1940s, he worked as an art director on Madison Avenue, where he helped revolutionize the advertising profession. He later served as design consultant to leading corporations like IBM, ABC, UPS, and Steve Jobs’s NeXT, for whom he conceived comprehensive visual communications systems, ranging from packaging to building signage, all grounded in recognizable logos, many of which are still in use today. Rand’s influence was extended by students he taught at Yale University. His visually stimulating, yet problem-solving, approach to graphic design attracted devoted admirers during his own lifetime and he remains influential today. Mr. Albrecht developed the themes of the show, selected all artifacts, wrote exhibition text, and assembled the design team.

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Press
Coverage in the Wall Street Journal, Modernism magazine, fastcompany.com, untappedcities.com, amny.com, architectmagazine.com, and live television segment on NBC New York

“Mr. Rand didn’t invent branding, but he did it as well as anyone ever has or is likely to, a point driven home in an entertaining and enlightening way in ‘Everything is Design.’”
Ken Johnson, New York Times, February 26, 2015

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Credits
Exhibition designer: Perrin Studio
Photographer: John Halpern and Filip Wolak (opening reception image only)

This exhibition explored David Webb as a jewelry designer whose work was realized with technical mastery and who was viewed as a high-society figure whose clientele included Jacqueline Kennedy, Doris Duke, and Diana Vreeland. The exhibition brought together some 80 extraordinary examples of Webb jewelry: necklaces, rings, and other pieces rendered in hammered gold, jade, coral, enamel, and precious stones. In addition, the exhibition featured preparatory drawings and special displays that offered behind-the-scenes perspectives on the making of Webb jewelry. Artworks, photographs, publications, and advertisements situated Webb within the visual culture of the 1960s.

Mr. Albrecht developed the idea of the show, selected all artifacts, wrote exhibition text, and assembled the design team

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Press

Special featured segment on CBS Sunday Morning
March 2, 2014

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Credits
Exhibition designers: Peter Pennoyer and Katie Ridder
Exhibition graphic designer: Hilary Jordan/Norton Museum of Art
Installation photographer: John Halpern

Keep Calm and Carry On traced developments in architecture, engineering, urban planning, fashion, graphics, media, and product and automotive design between 1938 and 1951, a tumultuous 13-year period that spanned the run-up to World War II and its immediate aftermath. From 1939 to 1945, Britain’s creative class mobilized to win the war on the home front. Wartime initiatives spurred new levels of design innovation in a wide range of fields, explored in the exhibition with fashions, furniture, posters, drawings, photographs, films, and ephemera. The end of the war in 1945 accelerated progressive trends that had been launched during the war and were furthered with a series of postwar exhibitions presenting new and innovative ideas. Accompanied by a 128-page catalog.

Mr. Albrecht conceived the exhibitions themes and organization, identified its designers, selected all artifacts, wrote exhibition wall text, and edited and wrote the primary essays in the catalog.

>See exhibition catalog

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Credits
Exhibition and catalog design: Pure+Applied
Photographs: John Halpern

Co-curated with Phyllis Magidson and Phyllis Ross

The World of D.D. and Leslie Tillett rediscovered the artistic and social visions of a New York-based husband-and-wife team of innovators in the field of textile design. Beginning in 1946, D.D. Tillett and Leslie Tillett created handcrafted fabrics for fashion and interiors. These textiles strikingly blended traditional imagery with bold, modern color and were often achieved via inventive printing techniques. The Tilletts simultaneously espoused a vision of design as a tool for social change through their activism, writing, and teaching. Tillett textiles caught the eye of top interior designers and style icons such as Jacqueline Kennedy, Albert Hadley, and Brooke Astor, lifting the Tilletts to the top of their field, making them an important but untold part of the story of the creation of midcentury modernism.

Working with the co-curators, Mr. Albrecht developed the show’s themes and organization, selected all of its artifacts, and wrote exhibition wall text.

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Credits
Co-curators: Phyllis Magidson and Phyllis Ross
Exhibition designer: Cindy Sirko
Photographs: John Halpern

Traveled to the Museum of the City of New York in the fall of 2013 and the Wolfsonian, Miami Beach, Florida, in spring 2014

I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America was the first major traveling retrospective to explore the figure the New York Times recently dubbed “the Leonardo de Vinci of the 20th century.” When you drive on an interstate highway, attend a multimedia Broadway show, dine in a sky-high revolving restaurant, or watch a football game in an all-weather stadium, you owe a debt of gratitude to Bel Geddes.
A promethean figure who was equally comfortable in the realms of fact and fantasy, Geddes was both a visionary and a pragmatist who had a significant role in shaping not only modern America, but also the nation’s image of itself as leading the way into the future. The exhibition brought together some 250 artifacts, drawings, films, and photographs that charted Bel Geddes’s career designing stage sets, costumes, and lighting; creating theater buildings, offices, nightclubs, and houses, as well as their furnishings, from vacuum cleaners to cocktail sets; and authoring oracular books and articles that landed him and his prophesies on the front page of newspapers across the country. Accompanied by a 400-page catalog.

Working with an international group of scholars, Mr. Albrecht developed the idea of the show, selected artifacts, co-authored exhibition text, and edited and contributed to the catalog.

> See exhibition catalog

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Press
Articles in Metropolis magazine (print and digital editions) and the New York Times.com

“As exhibition titles go, I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America might seem a bit hyperbolic, though really it’s not. If anything, it would be difficult to overstate the trajectory of this prolific polymath, whose bold futuristic imaginings, coupled with a belief in the transformative power of art, architecture and design, drove him to rethink everything from Broadway theater sets and department-store window displays to the look of vacuum cleaners, cocktail shakers, the automobile, the circus tent and an interstate highway system.”
Ann S. Lewis, Wall Street Journal
September 10, 2012

“The Museum of the City of New York, which over the last few years has developed a sideline in mounting some of the best architecture and design exhibitions in town, has just dug into Bel Geddes’s archives at the University of Texas and produced a spectacular show that, if nothing else, will put him back front and center in the design consciousness. The exhibition, curated by Donald Albrecht, is the first full-scale Bel Geddes retrospective ever mounted, covering his entire career.”
Paul Goldberger, Vanity Fair
October 22, 2013

“….Geddes never quite found a place in the pantheon of American high style designers, and the fascinating survey that the curator Donald Albrecht has put on at the Museum of the City of New York therefore comes as something of a rediscovery.”
Martin Filler, New York Review of Books
November 13, 2013

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Credits
Associate curators: Cathy Henderson and Helen Baer/Harry Ransom Center

For the 2012 re-launch of the South Street Seaport Museum, Made in New York featured work by established and emerging designers practicing throughout the city.

Mr. Albrecht identified the featured designers and selected all artifacts.

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Credits
Exhibition design: Cooper Joseph Studio
Graphic design: Pure + Applied
Photographs: John Halpern

The Future at Home: American Furniture, 1940–1955, on view during the Museum of the City of New York’s presentation of Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, displayed furniture, textiles, and decorative objects by Saarinen and his contemporaries who shared an interest in new forms and materials and the goal of providing good design to the broadest possible public. Most of the featured artifacts, designed by figures such as Charles Eames, Ralph Rapson, Oscar Stonorov, and Willo von Moltke, were exhibited here for the first time.

Mr. Albrecht and his co-curator conceived the idea of the show, selected all the artifacts, wrote the exhibition text, and identified the designer.

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Press
Feature article in the New York Times

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Credits
Co-curator: Phyllis Ross
Exhibition designer: Perrin Studio
Installation photographer: Adam Friedberg

This retrospective reintroduced a legendary New York-based interior designer and astute businesswoman to both the general public and the design profession. An especially imaginative display took its cues from Draper’s own over-the-top style of neo-baroque decoration and high-voltage color. The show was accompanied by a catalogue.

Mr. Albrecht conceived the idea of the show and catalogue, selected all artifacts, wrote exhibition text, and assembled the design team.

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Press
Segment on CBS Sunday Morning and features in Vanity Fair, New York magazine, Newsweek, the New York Times, Architectural Digest.

“Her eye-popping colors, oversize prints, and controlled flourishes once defined urban interior sophistication. Now the exuberantly anti-Minimalist Dorothy Draper is front and center again.”
Wendy Goodman, New York magazine, March 27, 2006

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Credits
Exhibition designer: Pure+Applied
Custom muralist: Milree Hughes
Lighting designer: Anita Jorgensen
Installation photographer: Harry Zernicke

An exhibiton of more than 250 objects representing the best designs of the legendary American glass company Steuben from the 1930s through the 1950s. Included one-of-a-kind masterpieces by artists Henri Matisse and Salvador Dali, as well as tableware, architectural elements, and expertly designed promotional materials. Lenders comprised an international array of collectors and museums, from the Louvre to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Detroit Institute of Art.

Mr. Albrecht conceived the idea of the show and catalogue, selected all artifacts, wrote exhibition text, and assembled the design team.

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Press
Feature segment on CBS Sunday Morning and features
and reviews in the New York Times .

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Credits
Exhibition designer: John Keenan
Exhibition graphic and catalogue designer: Abbott Miller/Pentagram
Lighting designer: Anita Jorgensen

A pioneer in the concept of “lifestyle marketing,” Russel Wright anticipated the likes of Martha Stewart and Ralph Lauren. Wright designed dinnerware, furniture, decorative objects, all of which were featured in the show. He and his wife Mary Wright wrote best-selling how-to books that influenced a post-World War II generation seeking a casual, yet elegant, American domesticity. Accompanied by a 176-page catalog.

Mr. Albrecht developed the concept and themes of the show, its organization, and he assembled its design team.

> See exhibition catalog

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Press
“The show, a combination of brilliant utility and high-gloss kitsch, should be on the to-see list of anyone interested in the production and marketing of American-manufactured (as opposed to hand-made) design.”
Grace Glueck, New York Times, December 7, 2001

Special segment devoted to the exhibition on Martha Stewart’s television program

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Credits
Co-curator: Robert Schonfeld
Exhibition designer: Matter Practice
Graphic designer: Alicia Cheng/Cooper-Hewitt
Lighting designer: Anita Jorgensen
Installation photographer: Bill Jacobson